New Age Hippies
by The Cheshire Cheese
Summary: A Native American ensign questions Chakotay on his very confusing heritage. We finally learn why Chakotay's tribe seems like an odd medley of North American plains cultures, Central American ones, and Hollywood stereotypes. (Set in Season 1, right after "Cathexis.")


**A/N: I am not Native American, and don't pretend to be an expert on Native American culture/religion. I did however try to do at least enough research to make this believable (unlike the writers of the actual show). If I got any facts blatantly wrong, feel free to let me know and I'll try to correct them. **

**This story is set right after the Season 1 episode "Cathexis." **

**I don't own "Star Trek: Voyager."**

* * *

The whole ship was buzzing about how Commander Chakotay had saved the ship yesterday, utilizing his disembodied consciousness to possess various members of the senior staff, and send messages to them through the medicine wheel Lt. Torres had left over his comatose body. Ensign Annalie Blackhorse didn't even try to understand it. As far as she was concerned, it was just another strange space-anomaly-incident, something that would take an extremely in-depth understanding of "technobabble" to understand. But a lot of the human crewmembers were jittering about Chakotay using some magical Indian technique, as if they thought Natives could somehow exit their bodies at will, without the help of spacial anomalies. The commander himself was taking the day off, and not answering any questions. Annalie wasn't about to blame him. She had to admit that she herself had about a hundred questions she was tempted to bombard him with once she got the chance, starting with how it felt to be in the body of someone who was the opposite sex.

Since Chakotay wasn't available for comment, a lot of Annalie's shipmates were starting to come to her about it, asking her if she knew anything about the techniques Chakotay had used to exit his body. She'd tried explaining that she herself came from a Navajo father and an Ojibwe mother, and had no tribes in common with Commander Chakotay. In fact, she didn't even have a planet in common with him. Chakotay was from Dorvan V; Annalie was from Arizona. Before that morning, Annalie had never given any thought to Chakotay's tribe. Like a lot of First Nations people, she was private about her beliefs, and assumed the commander was too. But after all the ridiculous questions that morning, she found herself researching the Nakuna tribe of Dorvan V during lunch.

She munched her chicken wrap, scrolling through the information on her PADD. A reflection suddenly overtook her screen, and she looked up to see Commander Chakotay himself smiling down at her, with a tray.

"Mind if I join you?"

Annalie flipped her PADD over and pulled it away. "S-sure."

Sitting down, Chakotay added, "You don't have to stop what you're doing."

"I," Annalie figured she might as well admit it, rather than beat around the bush. "I was reading about Dorvan V."

"I noticed. I'm from Dorvan."

"I know. Someone mentioned…" Annalie glanced at her PADD, then added, "There's actually not a lot of information out there."

Chakotay thought, then said, "We're a somewhat private bunch."

"I think a lot of Indians are." Annalie lifted her orange juice for a sip, then smiled. "My dad always used to flip when someone called us 'Indians.' 'We're not from India! You sayin' all brown people look alike?'"

"Used to?"

"Well," Annalie took her sip and set the glass down. "I suppose he still does."

Like a lot of people on Voyager, she'd begun to get used to the idea that she'd never see anyone on Earth again.

For a moment, she feared Chakotay was about to offer some useless words of comfort about how they might still get home before 75 years, but he didn't.

"Find anything interesting?" Chakotay asked, sipping his coffee.

Annalie glanced up at him, and he nodded to her PADD.

"Oh! Um," she shrugged. "I'd probably have to be from…I mean…it's confusing."

Chakotay shrugged back. "I'm willing to clear anything up for you."

Good god, where to start?

"Okay well, um," she flipped the PADD back over, and looked around the table awkwardly. "I'm…I'm a little lost on…on what part of the world your tribe's actually from. You use deer skins and eagle feathers, but then it also mentions some relation to the Mayans, and how people from Dorvan would visit relatives in Central America…?"

"We're a bit of both." Chakotay said. "My tribe, the Nakuna, is a fairly new one. It was organized a short time after the Eugenics Wars."

Annalie blinked. "Oh. So you're kind of…"

"New Age Hippies. As some people put it," he said humorously.

Annalie nodded slowly. "My dad actually put it that way." After a pause, she added, "He's very, eh, _traditional_. He kind of looks down on the Indians who practice Christianity, or who belong to the Peyote religion or, or the Dorvan tribe."

Chakotay shrugged again. "To each his own."

"So, Natives from North and South America put this tribe together?"

"That's right. It started somewhere in North America, and then they began to get people from South and Central America joining in. Basically, it was a group of people descended from tribes that… that no longer exist. That were converted out of existence by English or Spanish conquerors. They wanted to recreate something similar to what they thought our ancestors did."

"That sounds like Wicca," Annalie said.

"Exactly. I…don't know how accurately we got it down. But you'd have to take that up with my great-grandparents. It's what I grew up with. If the origins were a bit sketchy, oh well."

After munching her sandwich a bit, Annalie asked conversationally, "So you lived on Dorvan V your whole life?"

"Most of my life, yes. Dorvan wasn't actually settled until after I was born, but we were among the first people to settle it. Before that we lived on Syrena II, but I don't remember much about it. After that it was just Dorvan V, and then California, Starfleet Academy."

"You're lucky." Annalie said.

"How so?"

"You grow up surrounded by your own tribe, and then you go straight to Starfleet Academy, the all-accepting world of Starfleet."

Giving her a curious look, Chakotay asked, "Where did you say you were from?"

"Arizona. Really nice place," she added. "But really…the part I lived in didn't have a lot of Navajos. And no Ojibwes—my mom was from Wisconsin originally."

"Did you feel like an outsider?"

"No, not for the most part. But I sometimes wished there were others, and it was awkward when trying to explain why we did certain things to my friends. I lost count of how many people I had to explain to that we don't smoke piece pipes with marijuana in them, we don't have animal guides, the Christian converts don't speak for all of us—god, and a _few_ of the Christians, they'd try to convert you…not most of them. My best friend back home's a Mormon actually…" Annalie trailed off.

Chakotay admitted, "The Nakuna have animal guides, and I can't honestly tell you where that comes from. As for the drugs…the Peyote Religion…had some involvement with the Nakunas. We eventually swapped the cactus for the Akoonah."

"Oh, that's that metal thing you use for your vision quests?"

"It's a device that helps you tap into your subconscious, but it does so without some of the side effects that the peyote might have."

"But that didn't have anything to do with your out of body experience everyone's talking about?"

"No," Chakotay shook his head. "That was the aliens' handiwork. It extracted my consciousness from my brain, and turned me into some kind of entity." he laughed almost nervously. "What, are people saying I had did some magical Indian trick to pull that off?"

"Something like that."

Blowing through his lips, the commander sighed, "Guess I'll have to start setting the record straight."

They chatted a bit more about their families, time in the Academy, and thoughts on being lost in space, before Annalie had to get back to her station.

"I have to ask Commander," Annalie said timidly, before leaving the table. "What was it like, to be a Vulcan, or a Talaxian, or, well, a woman?"

Chakotay's eyes darted, as he searched for the words. "Vulcan wasn't so bad, sounds were more intense. And smells. But the other two," he chewed his lip, before finally saying, "It's good to be myself again."

Annalie realized that answering her questions too thoroughly might breach the privacy of Neelix, Lt. Torres, and Captain Janeway, so she didn't pry anymore. She bid Chakotay goodbye and headed back to her station.

* * *

**A/N: Chakotay's tribe is never named onscreen. I made up the word "Nakuna" myself, going off something that sounded like "Akoonah" (which the "Voyager" writers made up). **

**I wrote this to resolve the conflict I had about the Chakotay character. I love Chakotay, but am fully aware of what a dreadful stereotype his supposed tribal heritage is. I read a theory on TV Tropes that his "tribe" were just a bunch of New Age hippies, and went with that. Stereotypes aside, the simple inconsistencies with Chaktoay's heritage was a plot hole that needed filling. One episode he's a North American Plains Indian, the next he's from South of the Boarder. As the Nostalgia Critic would say, you can do whatever you want in a story if you "JUST…EX…PLAAAAIN!" **

**I did not go into detail about Annalie's tribal heritage because that wasn't the point of this story, and I am too unfamiliar with real Native American cultures to do so. I'd leave it to either an actual Native, or a more informed cracker than myself, to do that. **

**Annalie Blackhorse is a totally made-up character on my part. The name "Blackhorse" comes from Amanda Blackhorse, a Navajo activist currently working to get the Washington Redskins to change the very slightly insensitive, and just a little-bit out-of-date, name to something else. "Annalie" was the name of a babysitter I had as a kid (who was white). I just like the name and thought it fit well with "Blackhorse." **


End file.
